Thursday, June 1, 2017

The Science and Medicine in South Asia (SMSA) interest group of the Society for Medical Anthropology is pleased to welcome submissions for the 2017 SMSA Graduate Student Paper Prize. This will be the inaugural year for what will be an annual graduate paper prize awarded annually for a paper that offers an innovative approach to issues related to science and medicine in South Asia. Due Date Extended: Friday, June 30th 2017

As an example, papers might address any of the following issues:

Contemporary developments in science and medicine in South Asia: What makes the situated and oftentimes rapid changes in these fields both exceptional and mundane?

Scalability and modularity of scientific & medical practice in South Asia: how are certain forms and interventions rendered generalizable and replicable in light of economic, ethical and political demands?

Multiplicity of science & medicine in South Asia: How do we know what is science, what is medicine, and what is not? What are the ethics and politics of such distinctions? What are the relationships between institutionalized and non-institutional forms of therapeutic practice? Are there distinctively South Asian forms of science & medicine, and how might they relate to both global and local epistemological regimes – for example, in the calls made for global public and mental health?

What forms of ethical concerns and debates are crystallizing around questions of science and medicine in South Asia, from controversies around organ transfer, stem cell science and patent law, to IVF, surrogacy and clinical trials?

Science, medicine & law: What are the ways in which legal reasoning comes to shape scientific and medical practice, and vice-versa?

Science, medicine & security: How are threats concerning the spread of infectious disease, and in particular, emerging zoonotic conditions, figured in relation to ideas of the population and the state?

How do various peoples and communities – understood along lines of caste, class, religion, race, ethnicity, region, gender, sexuality and bodily difference – access and relate to various forms of science and medicine in South Asia?

Submission rules:

The word count should be 6,000-8,000.

All author(s) must be enrolled as graduate students at the time of submission.

The paper can be under review at the time of submission, but it cannot be at the revise and resubmit stage, in press or digitally published (with print publication pending).

To enable a blind review process, the submission email should include two word documents: (1) a cover sheet with author name, affiliation(s) and acknowledgments, and (2) the paper (abstract included) with no identifying information listed.

The winner of the prize will be announced at the 2017 AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The winner will receive an award certificate, suggestions from the committee of judges on ways to prepare the article for publication, and a cash prize of $100 (or $75 in case of two winners).